“Circuses, especially their odder sideshow attractions, are a familiar ingredient in horror fiction. But here the colourful historic setting and the liveliness of the story make shenanigans in a mirror-maze seem fresh and interesting. There’s a clever twist involving said mirror, and the relationship between members of da Silva’s crew are nicely dramatised, as is the captain’s attitude to his family. There’s also a touch of horror-comedy, as a zombie disintegrates in combat but continues to try and get the job done. They had a proper work ethic in those days …Overall, The Komarovs is a well-balanced novella, packing in more material than a short story could hold but still short enough to read in one sitting.” — David Longhorn

I’ve always had a soft spot for werewolves. About a year or so ago I started trying out a new voice, an NYPD detective who didn’t just happen to be a werewolf but had joined the police because she was one. “They say the real reason so many weres are drawn to law enforcement is we still want to run in a pack. Though if you ask me I think it’s just ’cause we like chasing stuff.” I spent quite a long time nailing Taz’s voice, and also working on her world (in short, the weres are cops and the vampires are the Mob) and how it all worked and fit together. This story came out of that— in effect, it’s backstory before I’ve even completed the present-day narrative!

Alchemy Press have also published your novella The Komarovs – tell us about that and is it connected to any of your other works?

It’s just one in the long-running series I call the Da Silva Tales, which comprises so far about twenty long short stories/novellas (a goodly number of which have been anthologised) and four-and-a-half novels, the first of which, Demon Weather, has been published by Booktrope. David Longhorn summed up the milieu thusly: “One not-so-fine day Portuguese sea-captain, Luis da Silva, found himself in Venice under demonic attack. The result was to make him a ghost-seer and necromancer— one with the power to conjure up those who’ve died before their time.” Set in the early years of the 20th century, the Captain amasses a “Scooby Gang” which includes one of the protagonists of The Komarovs— Harris the werewolf. In fact its original title was Wolfbane!